Sometimes the online world reveals unsuspected parallel dimensions. This is an unknown restyle of Neural independently (and secretly as we never knew about it) made by NY-based Motion and Graphic Designer, Clarke Blackham. Very nicely made, perhaps only a bit glossier for the magazine’s line, it testifies once more how even your most familiar outcomes can have another life somewhere else.

The value of craft after software sounds rampant sometimes, expressing the freedom of escaping repetitive taps and clicks to accomplish some assumed tasks. Mixing media, electricity, electronics, mechanics and inert objects Graham Dunning has realised a structured track/performance/open script in his “Mechanical Techno: Ghost in the Machine Music.” More than a proof of concept a machine music declination.

Isn’t ASCII Art a perfect form of “graffiti” in 2010s? The 8-bit aesthetics is among the strongest visual references connecting the analogue recent past with the omni-digital present, so why not adopt it to finally have some public art embedded in the present? In Varberg, Sweden, 2016, the GOTO80 crew (feat: Karin Andersson) did it, choosing (not by accident) the Mo Soul Amiga-font.

The relationship between Andy Warhol and personal computers (becoming quite popular during his last years) has been only partially investigated beyond his Amiga works. In November 2015, Sotheby’s sold his “Apple (from Ads)” (acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas) for 910.000 USD, and in catalogue’s notes Warhol tells about his meeting with Steve Jobs insisting to give him one and showing him how to draw (even if still in black and white): “we went into Sean [John Lennon’s son]’s bedroom–and there was a kid there setting up the Apple computer that Sean had gotten as a present, the Macintosh model. I said that once some man had been calling me a lot wanting to give me one, but that I’d never called him back or something, and then the kid looked up and said, ‘Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.’ And he looked so young, like a college guy. And he told me that he would still send me one now. And then he gave me a lesson on drawing with it. It only comes in black and white now, but they’ll make it soon in color…I felt so old and out of it with this young whiz guy right there who helped invent it.”

Minority Report comes closer… Three huge screens at Birmingham New Street railway station are scanning passers-by and play advertisements accordingly. http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/new-street-station-advertising-screens-9920400

Amantra vs Submerged ‎– Lost Direction

CD – Kvitnu

At first listening, synthetic repetitions and ritual atmospheres, a bit dark and churchy, welcome us, and later gradually become more spatial, vibrating and cosmic. A continuous tremor, as though it was the result of a delirious and euphoric meditation, permeates the spaces and fills the first track, sixteen minutes long, with a mysterious presence. Thierry Arnal and Ohm Resistance, here known under the names of Amantra and Submerged, keep the tension hard, thanks to their tentacular electronic hooks and their almost symphonic, hypnotic and powerful equipment, moderated just on some parts in the second recording (a minute longer than the first one). The brutality and cruelty of the sequences is sweetened by measured eclectic electronic insertions, including melodic, industrial or folk elements. Because of this, it’s not easy to recognize the sources of inspiration the authors might prefer to hide or keep unclear, characterized by personal taste and never referred to as precise sub-genres. We think this multiform approach is highly appreciated by Kvitnu, a label based in Vienna who has many lovers in the international electronic enclave. The label art director, Dmytro Fedorenko and Kateryna Zavoloka, have never concealed their love for both the most radical and conceptual experimentations and the technoid scenes, with an inclination to exotic and melodic suggestions and to the ultra-futuristic and machinery sequences, on the borders of contemporary music research. We would not be surprised if in this case somebody would mention post-rock or some electronic distortions reminiscent of ’60s psychedelia, or the possible assonance with Mogwai and their visionary, iterated and epic energy. The broad variety of styles and suggestions keeps the attention high, focusing on the process on use, the tentacular narration, the intimate and weird trends of the intense, dreamy and sensitive recordings. The absence of rhythm is apparently not a problem for the authors, due to the cinematic matrix of the sequences, that express all their power with a dark and immanent, orchestral and oppressive temporal cycle. Devious ambient manipulations, various experimentalisms, synthesizers and effects, a slow and relentless power: this is the stabbing and growing structure, when the minutes go on and the listener gets always more physically, surprisingly and unhealthily involved.